Bar Owner Fears Euro Shenanigans

Published 8:00 pm, Wednesday, January 23, 2002

A bar owner who got mildly stung said the brains behind Europe's single currency have goofed: 2-euro coins are virtually identical to a Thai coin worth nowhere near as much.

Alejandro Diaz, who runs a bar in Mollet del Valles near Barcelona, said he found five 10-baht pieces in the coin box of his cigarette machine on Saturday.

Ten baht are worth about 23 U.S. cents, while two euros buy about $1.80.

The resemblance between the 10-baht and 2-euro coins was so striking _ in diameter, thickness, weight and even the two-tone, gold-inside-silver design _ Diaz said he couldn't believe his eyes.

He ran tests and found that not only the cigarette machine, but also the slot machine in his bar swallowed the 10-baht coin and worked just fine.

From a jeweler with a high-precision scale Diaz said he learned both weighed 8.4 grams.

For final confirmation, Diaz took the coins to a blind vendor of lottery tickets for a Spanish charity. Those sensitive, experienced fingertips couldn't tell the coins apart either.

Diaz said the money he got stiffed for is the least of it. What incensed him was that merchants who were forced to adapt their equipment to accept euros and told the euro was absolutely safe and counterfeit-proof now face an entirely unexpected threat.

"So it turns out there is a coin that is identical, has a much lower value and is legal tender _ that's the funniest part _ in Thailand," Diaz said from his bar.

And in Spain at least, the potential for baht-based shenanigans, albeit on a peanuts scale, is tremendous, Diaz said. Thailand is a popular vacation spot with Spaniards, and virtually every Spanish bar and coffee shop has a cigarette machine and a one-armed bandit.

Diaz said the designers of the euro had displayed stupidity, or at the very least, zero originality. "Maybe they went to Thailand on vacation, liked the currency and said 'instead of wracking our brains let's just use this one,'" Diaz said.